The first goal is to find your voice and the second goal is to lose it.

-Saint Reverend Jen

The ELIS EIL Interview

Reverend Jen Miller

photo by J. Kleinman    

Attention all harried, hardworking artists; New York City’s Saint Reverend Jen Miller; aka the Sex Symbol for the Insane, Patron Saint of the Uncool, and the Voice of the Downtrodden and Tired is much busier than you.

An NYC Lower East Side Art Star, Performance Artist, Troll Museum curator, Elf enthusiast and general Lower East Side cruise director - the Rev is the author of several books, (her latest, Really Cool Neighborhood, is a travel guide to the Lower East Side), and the co-creator and star of many films - Elf Panties, Lord of the Cockrings and the Electra Elf series among them.  If all of this wasn’t enough, she is also the creator and host of the popular Anti-Slam at the Collective Unconscious on Ludlow Street (soon to be moved to an undisclosed location). To give the reader an idea of what the Anti-Slam is, remember the little elf in the Christmas special who wanted to be a dentist? He ended up in the place where the broken and misfit toys go? That’s the Anti-Slam and Reverend Jen created it based on designs by Rankin and Bass. She is usually found with her beloved companion, a Chihuahua named The Reverend Jen Junior. Her most defining feature: the pointed elf ears that perpetually poke out beneath her shoulder length black hair. While most Lower East Side artists and aficionados are familiar with the Reverend, the Anti Slam, her titles, guerrilla performance art and her books and films, we found that Jennifer Miller still has a few surprises left for the rest of the world.

We met the Rev. at the outdoor garden of Barramundi located adjacent to The Collective Unconscious on Ludlow Street. It seemed nearly everyone in the outdoor patio knew her. Not surprising, the LES is where she works, lives and plays, occasionally venturing out to perpetrate performance art on her fellow New Yorkers. We found her to be intelligent with a quirky personality and emanating a pretty sci-fi allure. What else would you expect from the Sex Symbol for the Insane?

Elis Eil:  Are you really ordained?

Rev Jen:  Yeah, Universal Life Church. In 1993 I sent a dollar with a letter and told them I wanted to be a reverend. I was at a Rush show and I was sitting next to guy and he said “I’m a reverend,” and I thought, that’s so cool. He told me where to send my dollar. I had pioneered the religion of the uncool called HAL.

EE:  Patron Saint of the Uncool, Sex Symbol for the Insane, Voice of the Downtrodden and Tired. You have a lot of titles…

RJ:  I’m constantly giving myself titles. I like the idea of making yourself more important than you actually are.

back to top

EE:  You’re writing another book about growing up in Maryland.

RJ:  You get to a point when you’ve got nothing to lose at all, so you just do whatever you want. Some kids in my High School wrote YOU ARE A ART-FAG on the tree in front of my house. At that point I thought, I have nothing to lose. I grew up in Silver Springs. An upper middle class suburb. It was sort of like, really normal people everywhere: guys in their khakis and button down shirts. They did not want anyone to veer from the norm. The kids who did were part of a specific counter-culture. There were metal heads whose girlfriends carved their initials into their arms. There were a few punk kids that hung out at the 9:30 Club. I was a virgin. I worshipped Joan Jett and Cherie Currie and those girls. Up until I found out who Johnny Rotten was, I thought I was a lesbian. I thought it was just a world of Maryland jocks out there waiting for me and I was gonna go gay. I liked punk rock music. It was the first type of music that made me want to be bad. Those were the first guys I had crushes on. I didn’t identify with anyone. I had a few friends that were into writing.

photo by P. Penta           

EE:  What does your family think about your career?

RJ:  I have three older brothers and an older sister and they’re all extremely normal. I’m the youngest. One brother is a Republican politician in DC and that’s actually kind of insane, actually. He’s probably crazier than me. My sister’s still my best friend, we’re only two years apart. She has kids and lives in a nice house. We’ll go and hand out at the beach for the weekend. She’s really fucking funny. I get along with my family really well. There’s a misconception that people become artists to piss off their parents. But, if you talk to the majority of them it’s because they want somebody to listen. Their always hoping they’ll do that one work of art and their parents will go, Ohhhh! I don’t show my parents anything that I do. Occasionally they’ll discover things about me on the web. I give them my book but I said to them, don’t read it! They don’t want to hear about the sex and drugs. They looked at the pictures. My Mom has seen my show at the Collective. I made her wear a ‘Hello My Name Is Reverend Jen’s Mom’ sticker. She had fun. My siblings know quite a bit about me. When I brought Nick home I just hoped they would leave college basketball on so no one would discover how strange my boyfriend is. Everyone’s in their own world.

EE:  Tell us how you met (filmmaker Nick Zedd).

RJ:  We met on the set of Terror Firmer back in the summer of ’97 or ’98. We were introduced but didn’t see each other until a couple of years later. He sent me an e-mail asking if he could come to my Troll Museum. Then we started going out. And I said to him, hey, I want to make this film called Elf Panties. I had a website called Elfpanties.com where I used to sell my panties. I had it for a few years until I sold it to some porn site. It wasn’t a popular fetish. I think it was a little weird for most people. At the time Nick and I were working on the film Thus Spake Zarathustra. We borrowed a camera and had fun for a few days fucking around with me doing everyday things in my panties. Then I decided I wanted to make my Lord of the Cockrings into a movie. I’d heard they spent 300 million on the trilogy and I thought wow, I want to make one for like 300 dollars, you know? I wanted it to come out the same week as Lord of the Rings just to be obnoxious. I asked Nick to direct it. I’d originally written it as a musical. We made another movie, I Was a Quality of Life Violation. It’s a really sad day in the life of an elderly person who gets beaten up by the NYPD. We wanted to do something for cable access TV. We’re both really into super hero movies so we thought it would be funny to turn Electra Elf into a G-rated fetish film, which is really what Batman was. The outfits, Bat Girl being tied up, etc.We also wanted to push buttons with Electra Elf, or at least make it about issues. The third one is going to deal with global warming.

back to top

EE:  So, it’s a collaborative thing, then? You both put it together?

RJ:  I wrote Lord of the Cockrings, I Was a Quality of Life Violation and the first Electra Elf. He wrote the second one. We’re taking turns writing the Electra Elf episodes.

EE:  Are the films scripted or improvised?

RJ:  Oh yeah, they’re totally scripted. Sometimes the actors we use come up with a line that’s so hilarious we’ll just like, oh yeah-put it in. The actors are comedians and performers who are good at improvisation. Faceboy has been in every movie I’ve done. He’s great at improvisation. In the next Electra Elf, Mike Amato plays Jacques Cooze-Toe, he’s a really funny comedian and a great actor. Making films is so expensive and stressful. I’d rather just type away, but I wouldn’t want anyone else doing Electra Elf.

EE:  Do you do any theatre work?

RJ:  I do a little. I had an agent and he sent me on Adam Sandler auditions and stuff. They wanted me to pick up the energy and I couldn’t. I wasn’t interested. They didn’t like my voice.

back to top

photo by P. Penta

EE:  In your book you say you love porn, but you’re too embarrassed to rent it. And you made Elf Panties?

RJ:  It’s not porno. There are no body parts. I’m lucky because friends of mine bring me vintage porn. Faceboy brings me a lot of good stuff with dudes from the 70’s that are totally out of shape and stuff with midgets.

EE:  Talk about the performance art stuff where you run amok in public…

RJ:  Interacting with the public, yeah. I was working on this cable access show called Tools of the New School for years, from ’97 to 2000. That was a lot of pranks and stuff. We would try to infiltrate scenarios in costume. The when I dressed as Doo-Doo the Fifth Teletubby. I went into FAO Schwartz and signed autographs as the creative genius behind the Teletubbies. As I got thrown out there was this Teletubby theme song playing and it was going: “Say bye-bye.” So fucking hilarious. I did some crazy stuff in that outfit. I stage dove at a Lunachicks show. I lost one of Doo-Doo’s hands doing that. That’s why one of his hands is an oven mitt.

back to top

EE:  You went to Ozzfest in New Jersey with you dressed as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz and Hank as a Rock fan…

RJ:  The older metal heads liked him but the younger ones were hostile. We were the normal ones at the Ozzfest. We were inspired by Heavy Metal Parking Lot, of course. Hank and I just wanted to hang out in the parking lot of the Ozzfest. We once spent a weekend pretending to be Stryper.

EE:  A lot has been written lately about the Anti Slam at the Collective Unconscious, and the Art Stars who populate it. Can you explain the term Art Star?

RJ:  An Art Star is a vague term but it is helpful because it keeps artists from being pigeonholed, you know? I always hated when people asked ‘what are you doing, are you a painter, a sculptor, a musician?’ and it’s like. I’m just an artist, it’s a means to an end. I have the idea first then I figure out how I’m going to do it. Be it writing, film or painting. And I like the idea of calling things things that they’re not. They’re all stars at the Anti-Slam but no one’s famous. The Collective Unconscious will actually be closing the last week in November. I’ve been getting 70-80 people on Wednesday, so I’m definitely looking for another space. Maybe a bigger space. A friend offered a space in a bar, but I’d rather go to a theater space as opposed to a bar. I like theaters for performing and bars for drinking. In the future I’d like to have more special Anti Slams like The Prom and The Mr. Lower East Side Contest. We did a Valentine’s Day Special. They always draw a big crowd. I’d like to do one maybe once a week.

EE:  You are also a writer….

RJ:  I only write on my computer. Now that I’m used to it, I can’t write in my notebook. If I’m lovesick and meet some men and don’t want to waste computer space with bullshit, I’ll use my notebook. Most of my journals have kittens on them. I wonder if Hemmingway ever wrote in notebooks with kittens on them? I doubt it.

photo by P. Penta                    

back to top

EE:  As a writer, what’s your view of the NY print media?

RJ:  The Voice likes to write about me but I don’t think they would want me to write for them. They’ve always given me tons of listings, though. Everything has to have an angle. I have no angle. That was the great thing about SHOUT, I never had an angle and they let me write about anything. Most of the time I was writing about an experience or an adventure. Writing about personal experiences doesn’t exist in magazines.

EE:  You said, in your book, something like you’d rather dodge bullets on the way home than see what’s happening to the LES today.

RJ:  I only moved down here ten years ago. A guy broke into my building once and he jumped out the window and the cops came to my apartment to get at him. The cops needed blankets for the guy. They said we’ll get you new blankets. Of course, I never got any new fucking blankets. My rent was cheaper then. Rats the size of J.J. in the garbage room. Models live in my building now. There are some good things, like now you can get crepes down here. I also like that there are so many bars. It’s like the 1890’s.

back to top

EE:  What do you think of the current administration and it’s management of the City?

RJ:  Horrifying. I don’t take the subway but if I did …people should have been freaking out (about the fare hike). You know, breaking token booth windows, jumping turnstiles…setting things on fire. It’s all apathy and fear. So much fucking fear. The smoking ban is infuriating. It’s a way of stripping the counter-culture of it’s meeting place: The Saloon.

EE:  What’s with the Dude’s Page on your website? (this is a form that men fill out to see if they’re love-compatible with the Rev.)

RJ:  The Dude’s Form is not really serious form, but a sociological study of men. To see what they want.

EE:  What have you found out?

RJ:  I think that they just want someone to talk to and to listen to them.

EE:  OK, but why is there a question regarding if the applicants have back hair? Is there a sociological reason for the question, back hair or no back hair?

RJ:  I really don’t care either way (laughs).

photo by J. Kleinman

EE:  Was there a moment when you realized that you were on to something here, from being Jennifer Miller, an art student at NYU to becoming ‘The Saint Reverend Jen… Lower East Side celebrity…’

RJ:  It has all been very unconscious and slow, whatever I’ve given myself over to. I went from painting to sculpture to performance gradually. It wasn’t something I was really conscious of. It was experimenting with different art forms. With Sex Symbol for the Insane I really felt like I found my voice as a writer. The first goal is to find your voice and the second goal is to lose it. I want to keep going back and reinventing it (my voice) so I’m not being safe.

Check out the Rev at www.revjen.com

Transcribed by

Patrick Penta

back to top